


The one where Helena and Dick get fake-married

by Mix Stitch (Synph)



Category: Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, Fake Marriage, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 07:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5366912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synph/pseuds/Mix%20Stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena winds up having to go back to Gotham. She plans to take Dick along as backup, but the type of cover they need is a little... strange.</p><p>~UNFINISHED FIRST ATTEMPT FOR THIS YEAR'S RAREPAIR EXCHANGE~</p>
            </blockquote>





	The one where Helena and Dick get fake-married

**Author's Note:**

  * For [klose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klose/gifts).



> When I first started my rarepair exchange story for Yam, the first thing I came up with was a complicated fake-married story with Helena going back to Gotham to stop her cousins’ ridiculous criminal plot. It didn’t go anywhere because the set up was complicated and the characterization was… a thing in later parts but hey, here’s 2000 words of stuff that I then scrapped before coming up with almost 18k words of "Helena/Dick fakemarried on a cruise ship" shenanigans for the actual exchange.
> 
> Note: Yam, I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing what could've been if I didn't get sucked into the cruise ship case fic scenario!

Helena Bertinelli is _not_ used to asking for help.

She is used to giving orders and having them (mostly) obeyed. As Matron, she had St. Hadrian's and most of the students under her thumb. Now, as the acting head of SPYRAL with two years and several successful missions underneath her belt, things are different.

At least, things _should_ be different.

Helena has no idea how anyone in her family could've gotten her personal email, the one for Helena's public persona, not the private one as SPYRAL's center. When her parents died, everyone with the last name 'Bertinelli' washed their hands clean of her as if being killed was contagious. The last time that Helena was even *near* someone from her family, she was nineteen and at her Nona's side in the hospital. That her cousins Eddie and Phillip have the *nerve* to hunt down her information and email her after all this time, after all they are responsible for, leaves a nasty taste in Helena's mouth.

Helena reads the email three times, looking over every single letter in case there's something that she's missing. At first glance, the email looks innocuous, like a letter from one cousin to another wanting to catch up. When Helena looks again and looks longer? That's when things start to stand out.

Despite not actually writing out his intent in the letter, Helena reads between the lines of her cousins' email as if peering through glass. Several phrases pop out at her, their insincerity and attempts at clever wordplay raising Helena's hackles like nothing else. Her cousins are up to something big and knowing the two of them, it isn't likely to be anything good. Their claim to do something big enough to put the Bertinelli name back on the map worries Helena. Part of that is because those two are the reason that her family name was ever wiped off the map in the first place. If not for the two of them turning on the family -- on Helena's *parents*, they wouldn't have to worry about doing *anything* for the Bertinelli name.

If those two morons are claiming that they can do something, anything to make up for that or change the fact that Helena's parents and the very backbone of the Bertinelli family were killed all those years ago... Well, Helena's not about to let that go without a fight.

Helena prints the email out and then wipes it from her inbox as well as the server. No one from her old life knows about her role in this game and while SPYRAL thrives on revealing secrets, this is one that will remain closely guarded.

Helena leans back in her chair -- her actual chair, not the sturdy wreck of leather and metal that the late Minos called a chair -- and pinches the edge of the email printout between her thumb and forefinger, staring at it hard as she tries to figure out what she's going to have to do.

Unlike the missions that she gives for SPYRAL, there's no delegating this. Either Helena goes back to Gotham and the trappings of her old life, or her two idiot cousins run around with something they don't have any idea to use. While wiping themselves off of the map might actually be good for Helena, she can't in good conscience let them get away with any of the foolishness that she has planned.

Helena huffs out a disgusted sigh and then jabs the button on her intercom with the tip of her index finger. When her secretary's voice comes online, Helena forces herself not to show any of the annoyance she feels in her voice.

"Send in Agent 1 and Agent 37," she says in a careful and cold tone of voice. "Their services are needed."

*

Agent 1 shows up at Helena's office first.

He greets Helena with a brusque nod and then sits down in the least comfortable chair in the office, frowning as his body bunches up with tension.

"Tiger," Helena says, greeting her agent by name with a small smile on her face. Out of all her agents, Tiger might well be Helena's favorite. HE gets his work done on time and with minimal casualties (minimal complaining too, but then Helena might just be biased). He is her most trustworthy ally in the organization and the only person alive that Helena could think to fill the specific role that she needs him for. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Tiger is very easy on the eyes, but Helena reminds herself that the attempt at rule breaking wouldn't be appreciated on his part.

Tiger doesn't smile back at Helena, but his full mouth softens a fraction.

"Helena," Tiger says, the syllables of her name tripping out in his accent. He frowns for a moment. "Is Agent 37 --"

The door to Helena's office swings open with a crash. Only the fact that they're both trained agents keeps both Helena and Tiger from jumping right out of their seats as Dick Grayson saunters in with a sunny smile on his face.

Unlike Tiger who is dressed in his mission gear, Dick is still wearing clothes connected to his cover identity at St. Hadrian's. The sweatpants and t-back tank top look out of place in Helena's stylish and sleek office, but if Dick has any problem being out of place, it doesn't show on his face.

And what a face it is. Over her years working at SPYRAL, Helena has started to nurture a theory that Minos and his predecessor hired for good looks as often as skill. Why else would they have hired Dick, a man just freshly revealed as a superhero to the public eye, to work for SPYRAL?

"Hey, boss," Dick says in a casual drawl. "What's up?"

Dick drops down into the only unoccupied chair, not even flinching at the creaking noise that the chair makes when it suddenly takes his weight. He crosses his right leg over his left and leans back, the pose so at odds with the office and with Helena's situation that she has to fight back the urge to laugh.

Instead, Helena rolls her eyes as she sits up in her desk chair.

"I need your help," Helena says, looking each man directly. "I can't do this without you. Both of you."

Tiger's mouth downturns with a frown. "What do you need?"

Even Dick's jovial attitude shifts to a sterner, colder one. "Yeah, boss," he says. "What I can I do to help?"

Helena bites the corner of her mouth as she thinks. After a second, she comes up with the very first inklings of a plan. "Tiger, you will be in charge of assigning missions and dealing with issues for SPYRAL for the next three weeks. I need you to hold the fort while Dick and I go to Gotham."'

"Gotham?" Dick blurts out, his blue eyes distractingly bright. "Why Gotham?"

"I have unfinished business that needs taking care of," Helena admits with a begrudging grumbling note to her voice. "You're needed as backup and because I haven't been back to Gotham since I was nineteen. I'll give you more information as the situation calls for it."

Dick makes a face but wisely, doesn't say whatever is on his mind. He nods his head instead, frowning at something that he's thinking. "Okay, yeah," Dick says, "I'll go with you to Gotham. You're the boss after all."

Helena squeezes her eyes shut and then counts backwards from ten until she doesn't feel like throttling Dick over his flippancy. When Helena calms down a bit, she nods once, sharply. "Thanks for remembering that at last. Do you think that you can handle going back to Gotham with me or should I pick someone else?"

Not that Helena *can* pick anyone else.

She's prepared to try though because she's not completely corrupt by power, but then Dick nods.

"It's fine," Dick says. "I've got my implant and chances are, we're not running in the same circles that I used to. No one is going to recognize me when I'm with you." He offers her a smile. "It's fine. Give Tiger the chance to take charge for a change. This way he'll stop tormenting the new recruits."

Beside Dick, Tiger grunts and casts a glare at the two of them.

"I do not _torment_ anyone," he says sharply. "It is not my fault that the girls from St. Hadrian's are too easily distracted by anyone they find attractive. They have promise, but when they refuse to use it, I come down on them hard." Tiger's frown lifts for a moment. "But I am the best at what I do. Our trainees go on to excel at every mission, do they not?"

Helena holds her hands up in surrender. "No one's arguing that –" Her sentence cuts off when Dick opens his mouth to reply, pinning him with a sharp glare that silences him in the next second. "Now, if you're both finished, we need to start getting ready. Tiger, I want you in my office first thing in the morning and that means rescheduling all of your training sessions and missions."

Tiger nods and then rises gracefully to his feet. "I will be here bright and early. Tell your secretary to expect me." He leaves as silently as he arrived, leaving Helena alone with Dick in her office.

"And what about my gym class?" Dick asks once they're alone.

"It'll have to be canceled," Helena says. "The girls are used to it by now. They'll just have to wait until you get back from Gotham. I'll have someone put up an announcement on the bulletin board in the dorms once we're done here." She glances at her two agents, one stern and one smiling, and feels some of the weight on her shoulders lift. "I need you back in my office in three hours, Dick. Pack a bag of essentials for now and we'll pick everything else up on the way."

Instead of getting up from his chair, Dick frowns. "What exactly is my cover?"

Helena shrugs, the gesture deliberately vague. "I haven't decided yet," she says, the lie like a weight across her tongue. "You need to be close enough to me that the people we're going to meet won't think twice about _why_ you're there."

Dick's eyebrows draw together as he looks at Helena. "So what? You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend or something? I can do that."

Dick sounds eager – a little _too_ eager – but Helena figures that that's better than him not wanting to play the role in the first place. Besides, Dick _is_ attractive. He has many good qualities aside from that as well, but Dick is _really_ easy on the eyes and when coupled with his amazing skills and his flexibility, Helena kind of finds herself hating SPYRAL's policy on fraternization.

Helena smiles despite her urge not to. "I was thinking that you would be with me as my husband," she says. "What else could explain my being away from Gotham for all these years but a lovely European husband with enough money to keep me happy?"

"Like anyone would believe that you were only with me for my money," Dick scoffs. "You're going to have to come up with something better than that if you don't want our cover to get blown right off of the bat. Why can't _you_ be the wealthy spouse so I can be the eye-candy?"

The smile that comes to Helena's face is entirely unbidden.

"The people we'll be around know me," Helena says quietly. "I haven't seen them since I was a child, but trust me – they'll know that if I really was rich enough to have arm candy, that they'd've heard about it far sooner." She shakes her head. "No, we'll keep the husband angle but you don't have to be rich, just charming and unfamiliar."

Dick's answering smile is brilliant. "Charming? Hell, I can do that in my sleep."

"Good," Helena says, her own smile widening. "You just might have to."

*


End file.
